1. Revenge of the UI The Final Installment
Steve Chan Benjamin Hill Jinghua Luo Lilia Manguy Sarita Yardi
May 3, 2005

2. 26 with a severity of 3 or more
Our
BELOVED
Heuristic Evaluation
Partner Group…
…gave us
48 Recommendations
26 with a severity of 3 or more

3. “Yikes! That is ugly looking!
Layout
“The positions of some of the links and buttons are not very intuitive and clear”
Addison says…
“Yikes! That is ugly looking!

4. Help “Need more help and instructions” Grace reminds us…
Don’t confuse the users!

5. Visibility “Information in VERN is not very visible to users”
Gabriela wants to know…
Is VERN playing hard to get?!?

6. Consistency Developers Unite!
“We recommend a careful consistency check across all the pages once through by all the developers individually”
Developers Unite!

7. VERN’s New and Improved Ultra-Efficient Assembly Line
Ben
Applet
Code
Poet
Jing
Redesign
and
cleanup
Interfaces
Lilia
Visual
Designer
Button
Master
Steve
Backend
Hack #2
Sarita #1

8. Log In - Then Trapped users with pages of no return.
Cumbersome two-step login for new users.
Can I leave from here?

9. Login - Now Added links to the “Login” page.
Send users to the “Meetings” page immediately after registration.

10. My Meetings - Then Too many icons for users to remember.
“My Class Schedule” button not semantically related to “My Meetings”
Unintuitive position of meeting detail at the end of the side bar.

11. My Meetings - Now
Changed icons to plain text descriptions except for the “Initiator” icon.
Placed meeting detail on a separate page.
Removed the “My Class Schedule” button from the side bar and made it a time control in the calendar applet.

12. Meeting Detail - Then
Did not allow users to vote on meeting times from this page.
Buttons placed at the bottom were hard to find
Not clear if “Send ” would send to the initiator or all attendees.

13. Meeting Detail - Now Combined meeting detail with the calendar applet.
Changed the “Send ” button to “ Attendees”.

14. Other Design Changes Created context sensitive help
Modified the calendar applet layout to make controls more visible.
Separated groups from individual contacts in the “Contacts” page.
Redesigned “History” and “Contacts” pages so that they have a consistent look and feel.

15. Results of Pilot Usability Study
Notes taken by hand
Timed by hand
No video
Followed script but also open-ended
Timings interrupted by questions about UI
Often turned into ad hoc Heuristic Evaluation
Results are qualitative, and not very quantitative

16. Quantitative Results Task Subject 1 Time Subject 2 Subject 3 Sign-Up
0:45
1:30
0:22
Login
3:30
0:23
Create Meeting
4:00
4:30
2:41

17. Checking Meetings
Meetings on the side panel hard for testers to understand
The categories and visual layout need to be made more intuitive
Meanings of colors on the calendar screen confusing
"Whats with the gray things - I thought it meant not available?"

18. Schedule a Project Meeting
Trouble with the "Meeting occurs before“ term
Why aren’t year selection and location dropdowns?
Delegated organizer? What’s that?
2-step meeting scheduling was very confusing
Colors confusing for selecting times
3 user-selectable colors
2 additional colors on calendar unclear to users

19. Schedule a Project Meeting (cont.)
Users expected click and drag semantics to be more like text selection
Testers generally found week view starting on Sunday to be intuitive
"Create Meeting" issues
location at the bottom of the left side panel was an issue for all testers
"Propose Meeting" term preferred by testers

20. Class Schedule Screen Semantic issues
Meaning more along lines of "recurring meetings", and that "Class Schedule”
How to schedule a recurring meeting (not addressed in the current interface).
Different colors on the applet screen proved to be confusing.
Users expected that times entered to be reflected on the main schedule page

21. Contacts and Groups Contacts page is only a prototype
Users tried to actually use it
One tester suggested a pick list/text entry field combo to create groups
Others suggested drag and drop from Contacts to create groups
Testers asked for the ability to create a meeting directly from the contacts/groups page

22. Observations To have a rigorous quantitative study
Video the interviews
Do standardized coding of interview
Standardize timings
Count errors
Keep the test focused
Avoid falling into open-ended HE
Users thinking aloud is very useful
Allowed us to explore many design issues and get new design ideas

23. Demo
Watch me schedule a meeting.

24. Most interesting or useful lessons learned
First impressions count
The double login problem
“What do I do next?”
Can sabotage the flow
Heavily influenced by color and position
Conflicting Frames
Outlook users and "Schedule By"

25. Most interesting or useful lessons learned
Gray != Past
“We all get it, why don’t our users?”
Modes of Weekly Calendar
Doing something vs. what the user wants
The Elephant in the Room
What are unmarked times?

26. Internal and Team Lessons
The Contacts page
Should I stay or should I go now?
Don't break the create meeting flow
Expect it to all blow up
Don't enable dynamic content right before user testing

27. Final iteration – Propose Meeting
Propose Meeting: Wording change and new tab
Clarify that the "Propose and Vote on Meeting" is a two step process through navigational aids
Break out required and optional create meeting sections

28. Changes to Vern III
Revenge of the “Finalize Meeting”
BIG PLACEHOLDER